We could definitely build more housing. But "Meditations on Moloch" suggests that Malthusian traps might be inevitable. Why work ten hours when a political enemy like Russia or China might work 40 hours or 80 hours and then nuke you?

An effective nuclear deterrent is very low cost compared to an effective conventional military force. With nuclear weapons you can credibly threaten to kill 20 million people in $enemy_country [1] at a cost smaller than that needed to maintain a crewed air force of moderate capability. In theory, global military spending could drop by 90% with equal-or-better prevention of state-on-state warfare if more nations replaced conventional military spending with spending on nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, nuclear deterrence only works against rational actors, by rational actors. It doesn't prevent irrational human behavior or accidents. So a heavily nuclear armed world would probably see a downturn in violence between states until one fateful year when an accident or miscalculation escalates to kill more people than every war of the past 200 years combined.

[1] Terms and conditions apply: only valid for countries with population greater than 20 million.

> Driving a studio apartment three miles to get a coffee is lunacy

It sure is. I have a cheap drip coffee maker that I drink from all day, at a cost of a few cents a cup. Dirt cheap.

A few cents a cup?! Where do you buy your coffee? I buy coffee at about 12 bucks a pound. A pound makes about ten carafes of 4 cups (tbh, I use the term cup loosely, because a mug for me is more like 1.5 to 2 actual measuring cups) each. I get to more like 30 to 40 cents a cup. It seems like there might be potential for major cost savings.

Bloody hell, I live in a famously high cost country (Norway) and I can get perfectly acceptable coffee for half that price.

I buy 12 oz bags of ground coffee for $7.99 last time I bought it, which is up from $5.99 it used to be.

That'll last for a couple weeks, at 12 cups (actual cups) a day.

Coffee is my cheapest vices. I love coffee. When the pandemic hit, I stocked up on coffee.

Aha, maybe I'm putting dramatically too many grounds into my coffee, haha.